1. News Writing An Introduction

2. Facts are in descending order of importance

3. Leads Leads are the beginning sentence of an article, whose purpose is to make a reader want to complete the article

4. News Leads State who and what in 35 words or less Where, when, why and how are stated lower in the story

5. How to Determine if News is Valuable Impact Conflict Novelty Prominence Proximity Timeliness

6. IMPACT How many of our readers will be affected? Two – we may need to use the space for something affecting more readers Two Hundred – probably important to most of the people who read the WT

7. CONFLICT What is at stake? Homecoming Changes – is that a conflict people might be interested in? Sarah Palin – do her family problems concern you?

8. NOVELTY Is the topic different or unique to anything we have done before? Do we really need to read all the letters in a word, or just the first and last? Is Joe getting kicked out of class different or same old?

9. PROMINENCE Name Recognition Michael Jordan vs. Matt Walls

10. PROXIMITY How near or close is the destination? Le Center vs. Leiden

11. TIMELINESS How recent or prevalent is the topic? Some topics are still important even though they may have happened two weeks ago. Others are no longer important, even though they happened yesterday. In our case, it is usually a week from writing to distribution.

12. Assignment Write a news article for the Wildcat Tales You will be evaluated on: - Lead - Inverted pyramid - News Value Criteria - Headline Due at the end of the day Thursday. Must be in Journalism folder.